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Furthermore, the FSC commander can
divide the company and place some ele-
ments forward with the supported unit
and other elements in the brigade sup-
port area. By doing this, the FSC can
anticipate and rapidly respond to urgent
movement requirements. It can deliver
supplies and mission-essential equipment
from either the brigade support area or
the maneuver battalion’s combat trains.
The FSC is ideally situated to use an
autonomous aerial distribution capability
as an additional means to fulfill routine
or urgent resupply requests. This capabil-
ity would reduce the supported elements’
vulnerability to enemy action and
increase their ability to exploit an ene-
my’s weakness. Essentially, autonomous
aerial resupply gives the FSC a solution
to support multidomain battle maneuver.
CHALLENGES
AND THE WAY AHEAD
Providing UASs for sustainment support
directly to maneuver formations would
present some challenges that would need
to be addressed before the capability
could be effectively implemented. These
hard questions first must be answered:
• How will unmanned logistics systems
be operated to maximize safety for
other aircraft and personnel on the
ground?
• How will these systems be integrated
into the tactical airspace control
network?
• Who will operate these systems for
the FSC, and what level of training
will they require?
• How will the systems be maintained,
and by whom?
• Will these systems displace other
equipment in the FSC?
• How will cyber and network security
concerns be addressed?
• How much payload should one sys-
tem deliver?
• How fast and how far should the sys-
tems be able to go?
To tackle these issues, the Army and
Marine Corps established the require-
ments integrated product team for the
joint tactical autonomous air resupply
system (JTAARS) in October 2016.
The team is exploring these questions
and refining procedures in order to suc-
cessfully implement autonomous aerial
resupply at the most forward tactical
echelons.
The integrated product team consists of
capability developers and subject matter
experts from the Sustainment, Maneu-
ver, Mission Command and Aviation
Centers of Excellence and from Marine
Corps headquarters and other stakehold-
ers. The team’s ultimate objective is to
fully document JTAARS requirements
and transition the system to a program
of record.
In the meantime, Army research orga-
nizations and their industry partners
are tackling the technical challenges to
develop air vehicles with the physical
characteristics, automated navigation
systems and associated human-control
interfaces that will allow the systems to
be integrated into FSCs.
Multiple DOD organizations are actively
pursuing technology to deliver capa-
bilities simple enough to maintain and
operate within the FSC. The U.S. Army
Armament Research, Development and
Engineering Center has teamed with
an industry partner to develop the joint
tactical aerial resupply vehicle, formerly
known as the Picatinny Pallet. The U.S.
Central Command is also pursuing a
cargo UAS.
Together, these representative technol-
ogy approaches were submitted as a
single joint capability technology dem-
onstration proposal. The proposal seeks
to develop and demonstrate air vehicles
capable of autonomously delivering pay-
loads of 300 to 600 pounds, which aligns
closely with the JTAARS integrated
product team’s preliminary requirements
SUPPLY FROM THE SKY
Soldiers of the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment (“The Old Guard”) participate in an exercise using the
JTARV in September with ARL at Fort A.P. Hill. During the exercise, JTARV showed its potential for
one day enabling Soldiers on the battlefield to order resupply and then receive those supplies
from an autonomous unmanned aerial vehicle. (U.S. Army photo by Pfc. Gabriel Silva, 3rd U.S.
Infantry Regiment “The Old Guard”)
68 Army AL&T Magazine
April - June 2018
RESUPPLY ON THE FLY